Tag Archives: skillful doubt

on cultivating doubt

“When there is great doubt” says a Zen aphorism that Kusan Sunim kept repeating,”then there is great awakening. This is the key. The depth of any understanding is intimately correlated with the depth of one’s confusion. Great awakening resonates at the same “pitch” as great doubt.  So rather than negate such doubt by replacing it with belief, which is the standard religious procedure, Zen encourages you to cultivate doubt until it “coagulates” into a vivid mass of perplexity…

Great doubt is not a purely mental or spiritual state: it reverberates throughout your body and your world. It throws everything into question. In developing doubt, you are told to question “with the marrow of your bones and the pores of your skin.” You are exhorted to “be totally without knowledge and understanding, like a three-year-old child.” To pose a question entails that you do not know something…To ask “What is this?” means you do not know what this is.

To cultivate doubt, therefore, is to value unknowing. To say ” I don’t know” is not an admission of weakness or ignorance, but an act of truthfulness: an honest acceptance of the limits of the human condition when faced with “the great matter of birth and death.” This deep agnosticism is more than the refusal of conventional agnosticism to take a stand on whether God exists or whether the mind survives bodily death. It is the willingness to embrace the fundamental bewilderment of a finite, fallible creature as the basis for leading a life that no longer clings to the superficial consolations of certainty.

~Stephen Batchelor, “Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist“

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#MarchMindfulness2016: Shine Bright

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Shine Bright! has been my personal mantra and my sideline cheer for others. But, oh, has this been a hard-won lesson to live into!

I’ve learned to honor my gifts and skills, and the contributions I make within my circle of loved ones and within my community. Still it continues to be a practice around “enoughness”– giving enough, learning enough, being compassionate, understanding, open, patient, skillful enough.

Doubt knocks on the door. Yeah, that’s right — Doubt has finally gotten some manners and no longer shuffles in uninvited while I scramble to push it back over the threshold. Now, I choose when to answer and welcome it in for deep inquiry where I skillfully sit with the questions it has delivered. What is this? Is this true? What can you see clearly?

Turning toward the aspiration to “shine bright,” I realized through several recent experiences (either as witness or participant) that we fear shining brightly means we’ll cast a shadow over others. We worry that expressing our full selves with unapologetic radiance, confidence, and vision is an act of vanity, ego, or arrogance. We’ve been taught that humility is a virtue, so we play small to make others feel less insecure.

At the same time, we receive a million messages about the importance of self-esteem and self-love. This is the crazy-making cycle our culture perpetuates that gives rise to lingering Doubt, which breaks in, refuses to leave, and becomes an indignant squatter in our hearts and minds.

So I appreciated reading an article years ago in which the writer reframed “humility” as being grounded and connected. To him, being low to the ground (as the eytmology defines it) in no way suggested self-deprecating acts of meekness or inferiority.

Rather, he embraced an understanding of humility that drew upon a sense of strength and stability from the Earth in the very same way that worshippers of various faiths will offer their full body in prostration during prayer. Bringing our body close to the ground is an expression of gratitude and wonder for the Power that makes life possible. It is empowering and energizing — a reminder to stay connected in body, heart, and mind to our capacity to love, create, inspire, teach, lead, serve, empower, heal, and thrive. And to thrive requires fertile soil…and light!